Thursday 1.15-5.15
EV 10-785
Erin
Manning
with Nasrin Himada and Ronald Rose-Antoinette
Sounds that
Move Us, Sounds that Escape Us
In a recent talk given at Concordia (March
2017), poet and scholar Claudia Rankine told a story about a tall black woman
waiting in line at the post office. A white man walked ahead of her. The woman
at the counter said “sir, the woman behind you was there first.” The white man
said “oh! I hadn’t seen her.” The black woman said “you must be in a hurry!” He
said “no, I just didn’t see you.”
This course takes as its starting point the
realization that we are always missing things. We are not hearing them. Not
seeing them. Not even noticing we are not noticing them. We will ask: what is
it that we are missing, and how can we attend not only to the fact that we are
missing it, but that there is a politics to what we are (not) hearing, (not)
seeing?
Orienting around the sounds of alterity (of the
alterity that is the share of our more-than humanness, of the alterity that is
black life, of the alterity that is neurodiversity) this course will be an
experiment in listening to that which we do not yet know how to hear, or to
that which we hear much too clearly (and can’t fathom how others are not
hearing it). It is a course that also asks us how we might create conditions
for a different kind of hearing, a hearing-with or a hearing-across.
Culling for key texts from the Black Studies
tradition as well as texts from indigenous, neurodiverse and queer scholars, we
will listen to the interstices between the words and ask not only what else we
might be able to hear but what the stakes are when learning begins to include
what it works so hard to exclude. We will also listen to each other to hear the differential in
the account of what is missing, of what is left unheard.
Finally,
we will ask: what is a course without an aim, without a centre? What is a
course that needs to tread lightly, to create the conditions for learning
rather than knowing the way of learning in advance. Toward these ends, we will
have the opportunity to explore, through art and cinema, through philosophy and
cultural theory, how else this learning might happen.
TECHNIQUES
This
is a course that explores what we cannot hear. Techniques for making felt what
is missed in experience will be at the heart of the course.
1 Listening: 1/3 of the class will be
marked as listeners for each week. Listening is probably the most important
thing we will do in this class. It will be our work to better understand both
what it means to listen and what it means to be listened to. Auditors to the
class will also be listeners 1/3 of the time (it will be your task to determine
when that is).
2 Googledoc: A googledoc will be open and
projected during each class. This googledoc is an opportunity for participating
in a different way. Listeners can use the googledoc. The googledoc will be
archived on the blog week by week.
COURSE SCHEDULE
SEPTEMBER 7
Eric
Dyson *audiobook
Tears
We Cannot Stop – A Sermon to White America “Inventing Whiteness”
Angela Davis 22 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Mfgl-5dd4
>> philosophy, hope, imagination
Angela Davis 11 min
Angela Davis 4 min
Amelia Baggs 8.30 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc In my Language
Reading Out Loud:
Tim Ingold Anthropology
and/as Education Chapter 1 – Against Transmission
SEPTEMBER
14
*visiting
scholar Denise Ferreira da Silva
Denise Ferreira da Silva “Toward a Black Feminist Poethics”
pp. 81-97
Reading Out Loud:
Sylvia Wynter On Being Human as
Praxis “Unparalleled Catastrophe For Our
Species?, or To Give Humanness a Different Future,” Conversation with Katherine
McKittrick pp. 9-45
Listeners:
Olivia, Jennifer, Yannick
SEPTEMBER
21
Fred Moten In
the Break “Resistance of the Object” pp.
18-66
Reading Out Loud:
Marlon
James A Brief History of Seven Killings, chapter 1
Listeners:
Matisse, Marco Augustin,
Alessandra
SEPTEMBER
28
Naoki Higashida Fall Down Seven Times, Get up
Eight Parts 1, 2, 5
Reading Out Loud:
Sparrow Jones Unstrange Minds “Autistics Speaking Day”
Donna Williams Autism and Sensing: The Unlost Instinct “The Everything of Nothing”
Listeners:
Zachary, Nicolas, Mariana
OCTOBER 5
Nathaniel McKay, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, pp. 19-21 +
pp. 76-78
Amiri Baraka, The
Blues Aesthetic and the Black Aesthetic: Aesthetics as the Continuing
Political
History of a Culture, pp. 101-109
listening
Steve Reich, Music
for a Large Ensemble
Listeners:
Stephanie, Elizabeth, Eloise
OCTOBER
12
Fred Moten In
the Break “Sound in Florescence” pp.
100-148
Listening/watching
Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust (1991)
Listeners:
Anna-Maria, Gregoire, Joshua
OCTOBER
19
Ashon T. Crawley, Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility,
“Noise” pp.
139-158
Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, pp. 63-75
Watching/listening
Jamilah Sabur,
Playing Possum (2012), Moon Tendon (2015)
Listeners:
Eli-Bella, Pierre-Luc,
Eduardo
OCTOBER
26
Fred Moten In
the Break “Baldwin’s Baraka”
pp. 375-418
Reading Out Loud:
Amiri
Baraka SOS -
Poems 1961-2013 selection
tbc
James
Baldwin Just Above My head selection tbc
Listeners:
Olivia, Jennifer, Yannick
OCTOBER 29 – EVENT
NOVEMBER
2
*visiting scholar Saidiya Hartman
Saidiya
Hartman – Lose Your Mother 233pp
*audiotext:
Toni Morrison Beloved Part III
Listeners:
Matisse, Marco Augustin,
Alessandra
NOVEMBER
9
Fred Moten In
the Break “Black Mo’nin’ in
the Sound of the Photograph” pp. 418- 458
Alexander G. Weheliye, “Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernities” pp. 5-10
Reading Out Loud:
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, The Undercommons pp. 131-136
Listeners:
Zachary, Lea, Mariana
NOVEMBER
16
Leanne
Simpson The Accident of Being Lost, Songs and Stories –
selection tbd
Listening
Leanne Simpson songs
Reading Out Loud:
Thomas King The Inconvenient Indian - chapter 5
Davi Kopenawa The
Falling Sky Becoming Other
Listeners:
Stephanie, Elizabeth, Eloise
NOVEMBER
23
Fred Moten In
the Break “Tonality of Totality” pp. 458-505
Reading Out Loud:
M. Nourbese Philip Zong selections tbd
Layli Long Soldier, Whereas, p. 5-15
Listeners:
Anna-Maria, Gregoire, Joshua
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